Thomas Aston Coffin (1795-1863)

He was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and graduated from Harvard in 1815. He was named for his uncle Thomas Aston Coffin, Commissary-General of England, and he was a first cousin of Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, R.N., 1st Baronet. In 1829, he married Harriet, daughter of James Elliott McPherson, of Brewton Hall Plantation. Coffin had summer homes in Charleston and Newport, Rhode Island, and was described as, "the epitome of a sea island cotton nabob". By 1850, he owned 2,911-acres (1,811-acres of which were prime cotton fields) and was the largest cotton producer in Beaufort County as well as the largest slaveholder on St. Helena Island with 301 slaves. When the Union Army arrived at the plantation in 1861, the family were gone but they found 260-slaves. He was the grandfather of the landscape designer Marian Cruger Coffin.